Tit for Tet

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Abu Ghraib is the new Tet offensive. By lying about the Tet offensive during the Vietnam War, the media managed to persuade Americans we were losing the war, which demoralized the nation and caused us to lose the war. And people say reporters are lazy.

The immediate consequence of the media's lies was a 25 percent drop in support for the war. The long-term consequence for America was 12 years in the desert until Ronald Reagan came in and saved the country.

Now liberals are using their control of the media to persuade the public that we are losing the war in Iraq. Communist dictators may have been ruthless murderers bent on world domination, but they displayed a certain degree of rationality. America may not be able to wait out 12 years of Democrat pusillanimity now that we're dealing with Islamic lunatics who slaughter civilians in suicide missions while chanting "Allah Akbar!"

And yet the constant drumbeat of failure, quagmire, Abu Ghraib, Bush-lied-kids-died has been so successful that merely to say the war in Iraq is going well provokes laughter. The distortions have become so pervasive that Michael Moore teeters on the brink of being considered a reliable source.

If President Bush mentions our many successes in Iraq, it is evidence that he is being "unrealistically sunny and optimistic," as Michael O'Hanlon of the liberal Brookings Institution put it.

O'Hanlon's searing indictment of the operation in Iraq is that we need to "make sure they have some budget resources that they themselves decide how to spend that are not already pre-allocated." So that's the crux of our challenge in Iraq: Make sure their "accounts receivable" columns all add up. Whenever great matters are at stake, you can always count on liberals to have some pointless, womanly complaint.

We have liberated the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator who gassed his own people, had weapons of mass destruction, invaded his neighbors, harbored terrorists, funded terrorists and had reached out to Osama bin Laden. Liberals may see Saddam's mass graves in Iraq as half-full, but I prefer to see them as half-empty.

So far, we have found chemical and biological weapons - brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, ricin, sarin, aflatoxin - and long-range missiles in Iraq.

The terrorist "stronghold" of Karbala was abandoned last week by Islamic crazies loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who slunk away when it became clear that no one supported them. Iraqis living in Karbala had recently distributed fliers asking the rebels to please leave, further underscoring one of the principal remaining problems in Iraq - the desperate need for more Kinko's outlets. Last weekend, our troops patrolled this rebel "stronghold" without a shot being fired.

The entire Kurdish region - one-third of the country - is patrolled by about 300 American troops, which is fewer than it takes to patrol the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach on Easter weekends.

But the media tell us this means we're losing. The goalpost of success keeps shifting as we stack up a string of victories. Before the war, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof warned that war with Iraq would be a nightmare: "[W]e won't kill Saddam, trigger a coup or wipe out his Republican Guard forces." (Unless, he weaseled his way out, "we're incredibly lucky.")

We've done all that! How incredibly lucky.

Kristof continued: "We'll have to hunt out Saddam on the ground - which may be just as hard as finding Osama in Afghanistan, and much bloodier."

We've captured Saddam! And it wasn't bloody! Indeed, the most harrowing aspect of Saddam's capture was that he hadn't bathed or been de-liced for two months.

Kristof also said: "Our last experience with street-to-street fighting was confronting untrained thugs in Mogadishu, Somalia. This time we're taking on an army with possible bio- and chemical weapons, 400,000 regular army troops and supposedly 7 million more in Al Quds militia."

And yet, somehow, our boys defeated them in just six weeks! Incredibly lucky again! And just think: all of this accomplished without even having a "Plan."

Now we're fighting directly with Islamic loonies crawling out of their rat holes from around the entire region - which liberals also said wouldn't happen. Remember how liberals said the Islamic loonies hated Saddam Hussein - hated him! - because he was a "secularist"? As geopolitical strategist Paul Begala put it, Saddam would never share his weapons with terrorists because "those Islamic terrorists would use them against Saddam Hussein because he's secular."

Well, apparently, the crazies have put aside their scruples about Saddam's secularism to come out in the open where they can be shot by American troops rather than fighting on the streets of Manhattan (where the natives would immediately surrender).

The beauty of being a liberal is that history always begins this morning. Every day liberals can create a new narrative that destroys the past as it occurred. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

To be sure, Iraq is not a bed of roses. As the Brookings Institution scholar said, we have yet to give the Iraqis "budget resources" that "are not already pre-allocated." I take it back: It is a quagmire.

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